Coventry University: E-Journals
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Long in the making: the ‘Gross Review’ and Conservative Party Policy on the reform of human rights law
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‘The Early Exposure is Really Helpful’ – Students’ Views of Participating in Communication Skills Screening
Get PDFStudents commence university with many hopes and dreams for their future and for most, these are realised. Health professional students must succeed in both their academic and clinical experiences. Excellent communication with their patients and colleagues on placement is necessary and particularly so for speech pathology students. This qualitative, descriptive study investigates how first- and final-year students view the screening of their communication skills in which they participate. The focus groups took place within the speech pathology department of a major Australian metropolitan university. Data were transcribed and analysed thematically. Three main themes arose: professional development, students’ cognitive and emotional responses, and the organisation of the screener. Both groups of students felt the screener was both an important part of their professional development and a way of identifying and supporting speech pathology students with communication difficulties. They valued the student-led nature of the process. Implications for the value of using a student-led communication screener to identify students with weaker communication skills early in their program and for the support of such students are discussed
Preparing Health Profession Students for Practice in Complex Real World Settings: How Do Educators Respond to a Model of Capability?
Get PDFUndergraduate education often leaves future healthcare professionals insufficiently prepared for the complex and unpredictable workplace. Competency-based medical education (CBME) is widely utilised in health professions’ education, but a growing literature highlights its limitations. Capability is a complex concept which builds on competence, while embedding the integration and adaptation of knowledge, skills and personal qualities. While capability can prepare learners for uncertainty and complexity, the concept has been slow to progress within health professions’ education. We introduced the concept of capability to over 110 international health profession educators through six conference workshops, using a visual model to facilitate understanding. Participants’ post-workshop qualitative feedback was collated and thematically analysed. One hundred and thirty-three free text comments were received and four main themes identified: conceptualising capability, capability as curriculum goal, educating for capability, challenges to implementation. The need for capability resonated with participants, although most were unfamiliar with the concept prior to the workshop. The workshop enabled participants to recognise the limitations of CBME’s ‘tick box’ culture when preparing learners to address complexity. The model helped educators grasp the concept of capability and its potential value in health professions’ education. Participants were then able to identify challenges and suggest approaches for implementing capability in practice. Educating for capability is fundamental for preparing students successfully for the ‘real world’ of professional practice. Most participants agreed it should be the end goal of healthcare education curricula. Healthcare educators are likely, however, to need support to embrace this paradigm shift
NAEP Conference 2020: ‘Whose placement is it anyway?’
Get PDFThe United Kingdom’s National Association of Educators in Practice (NAEP) has published the peer-reviewed abstracts that had been accepted for the 2020 Conference, cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The collected abstracts can be downloaded from https://naep-uk.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Publication-of-peer-reviewed-abstracts-2020-conference-final-12.04.21.doc.pdf 
Ensuring an Essential Supply of Allied Health Professions (AHP) Placements: Using Crowdsourcing to Develop a National Call to Action
Get PDFSustainable growth in the Allied Health Professions (AHP) workforce is an ambition of the United Kingdom’s NHS Long Term Plan. However historically, access to good quality placements has been a barrier to increasing pre-registration training numbers. This article focuses on work carried out by Health Education England (HEE) to gain insights on the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on capacity. Using a pragmatic, embedded mixed-methods approach, insights were gathered using an online workshop, crowdsourcing, open for two weeks in the summer of 2020. AHP placement stakeholders could vote, share ideas or comment. Descriptive data were extracted, and comments made were analysed using inductive thematic analysis. Participants (N = 1,800) made over 8,500 comments. The themes identified included: diversity of placement opportunity, improved placement coordination, a more joined-up system, supervision models and educator capacity. Alongside considering the challenges to placement capacity, several areas of innovative practice owing to the pandemic were highlighted. Generated insights have shaped the aims and objectives of the Health Education (HEE) pre-registration AHP student practice learning programme for 2020/2021 and beyond. The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the delivery of AHP placements. In the absence of face-to-face activities, crowdsourcing provided an online data collection tool offering stakeholders an opportunity to engage with the placement capacity agenda and share learning. Findings have shaped the HEE approach to short-term placement recovery and long-term growth
Understanding the Allied Health Professions Student Experience of Practice Placements during the First Wave of the Coronavirus Pandemic
Get PDFIn England, a national lockdown came into effect on 23 March 2020 in response to the rapid spread of the Coronavirus. Healthcare services were quickly redesigned or scaled back to meet the significant and rising demands. Many practice placements were discontinued, which resulted in large numbers of Allied Health Professions (AHPs) pre-registration students requiring placements to meet the required practice hours. The challenge for placement providers, who were experiencing increased demand and uncertainty, was to continue providing quality placements. At the local trust, 58 AHP students had a placement between April and July 2020. Some clinical areas offered traditional placements. However due to social distancing rules many placements utilised blended practice; using aspects of both direct face-to-face and remote practice. It is important to understand the student experience in anticipation of future surges of Coronavirus. In total, 36 students responded to a placement survey. Results showed the majority of the students reported positive placement experiences overall. Despite the ever-changing placement landscape and the need for flexibility, it is important to ensure that placements are well planned and that students are well informed about the safety measures in place. It is vital that student’s feel welcomed and valued in order to learn and reach their full potential whilst on placement. The use of a blended placement model provided valuable learning experiences, however consideration needs to be given to ensure that students feel part of the team and have confidence that their learning needs are met
Review of Academic Writing and Dyslexia: A Visual Guide to Writing at University
Get PDFThis is a review of the book Academic Writing and Dyslexia: A Visual Guide to Writing at University by Adrian Wallbank
Enhancing Peer Learning through Online Placements for Health and Social Care Professions
Get PDFThis article reports on the innovative design and the delivery of an online placement for university students, in response to the suspension of face-to-face placements due to COVID-19 restrictions in April 2020. A high quality, evidence-based and pedagogically sound experience was built, delivered and reviewed. The online placement not only met the professional standards and demonstrated equivalence in achieving placement learning outcomes, compared to traditional face to face placements, but also offered emergent benefits. The online placement showed enhanced peer learning and improved professional reasoning development by the students. In view of the interest and need for alternative placements, online placements were explored further, contextualised and built into a model which came to be known as Peer-Enhanced E-Placement (PEEP). Throughout 2020, and into 2021, the ‘logjam’ of increased student numbers and reduced placements, dramatically increased the interest in alternative placement learning and the PEEP model. A PEEP professional development acquisition experience was developed and piloted, to disseminate, scale and contextualize the approach by health and social care teams. Feedback from the pilot acquisition experiences indicated that the participants were able to design and implement PEEPs in their own contexts with their students. The scaling up and roll out of the PEEP acquisition experiences now extends to over fifteen professions. Conclusions include that the PEEP model offers a viable, acceptable and successful online practice-based learning option for health and social care students, achieving equivalence in placement learning outcomes and enhanced peer learning
Frontline Allied Health Professionals in a Tertiary Children’s Hospital: Moving Forward Research Capacity, Culture and Engagement
Get PDFHigher levels of research activity within healthcare contexts are known to result in improvements to staff and patient satisfaction as well as treatment outcomes. In the United Kingdom (UK), clinical academic careers for Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) are a key priority development area. This article presents the results of a study that aimed to scope the research capacity of four AHP professions in a tertiary children’s hospital using the Research Capacity and Culture Tool. This tool captures individuals’ views of success or skill required for a number of research-related items within the three domains of individual, team and organisation. Response rate ranged between 45-71% across the four groups. Reported barriers to carrying out research included a lack of time, clinical work taking priority, and lack of suitable backfill (i.e., employing a therapist to cover the clinical post for the AHP to complete research activity). Motivators, on the other hand, included skill development, career advancement, and increased job satisfaction. As a first step to strengthen research skills, a systematic process was used to devise a suite of supportive strategies targeting the individuals’ perceived gaps in their research abilities across four pillars: (i) awareness, (ii) accessibility, (iii) opportunity and capacity, and (iv) knowledge and skills. This process drew on previously published accounts of successful research capacity and culture development, as well as the unique needs of staff at this tertiary children’s hospital. The outcome of this process was a structured framework to support research capacity, culture and engagement. The specific details of this framework are reported in this article together with further recommendations to promote research capacity, culture and engagement amongst AHPs